Quote

The purpose of this brief essay is to present certain characteristic responses to "cult busting," or, the challenging of ideology that assists in binding members of a particular cult together. That cult is Alcoholics Anonymous, (AA), (Kurtz 1988; Antze 1987; Leach and Norris 1977).
Is AA a cult? There's plenty of evidence supporting the idea that it is. Greil and Rudy (1983) studied conversion to the world view of AA and reported that...
"[t]he process by which individuals affiliate with A.A. entails a radical transformation of personal identity in that A.A. provides the prospective affiliate not merely with a solution to problems related to drinking, but also with an overarching world view with which the convert can and must reinterpret his or her past experience....Our analysis suggests that the central dynamic in the conversion process is coming to accept the opinions of reference others, (p. 6).?t appears...that contact with A.A. is more likely to be accompanied by a greater degree of coercion than...most cases of religious conversion" (Greil and Rudy 1983, p. 23).
[b:0036f7398b]When ideas regarding voluntariness, responsibility, and addiction are introduced to members of AA and devout adherents to the disease concept of addiction, people who are usually involved with AA in some way, the following responses are likely to occur[/b:0036f7398b] (in no particular order):

NAME-CALLING...a person..." who has embarked on a "personal vendetta."

ACCUSATIONS OF MURDER...The ideas presented by the heretic are considered potentially dangerous...The heretic then personifies evil in the eyes of cult members.

YOU'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY...For example, the writer has been accused of trying to pirate potential psychotherapy clients away from AA ...

DIAGNOSIS OF MENTAL ILLNESS...Here, the heretic may be confronted on a paternalistic basis: "He is sick. He needs help." At times, cultists may yield and take a more compassionate posture in relation to the heretic at this point, trying to convince the heretic that he/she is sick...

IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE...in this case, if the heretic has not had a drug problem or shared in the problems-of-living experienced by cult members, he or she is said to be incapable of speaking from legitimate experience...

INVOKING AUTHORITY...When scientific evidence to the contrary is presented by the heretic, the research is said to be too old to be valid, not extensive enough, subject to diverse interpretations, and ultimately no match for personal experience...

SHAMING...The assault on the heretic is based on the idea that facts are cruel and insensitive to people who have done him or her no harm...

REDUCTIONISM, TAUTOLOGY, CONTRADICTION, AND NON SEQUITUR...Circuitous arguments evolve. Blatant contradictions emerge...

[b:0036f7398b]CONCLUSION?These patterns of response may be useful in analyzing and interpreting exchanges involving vituperation directed at one or several individuals who have either intentionally or not stepped into a nest of vipers, i.e., the cult, a volatile experience, to say the very least.

Quote

Well, I don't really have any hopes of [b:cc3e3f0033]changing the mind [/b:cc3e3f0033]of a "true believer".
Hell, I was almost one myself, once upon a time.

Quote

His response is that of a true believer--[b:cc3e3f0033] his mind probably won't change[/b:cc3e3f0033] (not that i think that it is useless to try.)

Quote

REDUCTIONISM, TAUTOLOGY, CONTRADICTION, AND NON SEQUITUR...Circuitous arguments evolve. Blatant contradictions emerge...

Quote

...in their self centerdness they see the world as conspiring against them. [b:9723cfbc82]They tend to gravitate towards harmful people and activities[/b:9723cfbc82]...

Quote

Your husband will sometimes be unreasonable and want to criticize.
Starting from a speck on the horizon, great thunderclouds of dispute may gather, These family dissensions are very dangerous, especially to your husband. Often you must carry the burden of avoiding them or keeping them under control. Never forget that resentment is a deadly hazard to an alcoholic.

The slightest sign of fear or intolerance may lessen your husband's chance of recovery. In a weak moment he may take your dislike of his high-stepping friends as on of those insanely trivial excuses to drink.

Quote

Our next thought is that you should never tell him what he must do about his drinking....
He may seek someone else to console him-not always another man.

Quote

tend to gravitate towards harmful people and activities.

Quote

[b:6fc0336324]Are you experienced? Not if you haven't experimented with hallucinogenic drugs like belladonna and LSD. The twelve steps of AA will never take you where Bill Wilson went.[/b:6fc0336324]

Many AA members still believe that Bill Wilson's famous "spiritual experience" was indeed a revelation of the Creator. [b:6fc0336324]In AA lore the event is told as the beginning of it all.[/b:6fc0336324] From that moment Wilson is said to have been freed from his obsession with alcohol. So it must have been God, a divine intervention, right? Not necessarily. [b:6fc0336324]Wilson was in a state of delerium tremens and was under the influence of the powerful hallucinogen belladonna and other drugs.[/b:6fc0336324] This complex situation is worth taking a close look at because it is central to so much AA myth and his later dabblings with LSD challenge the idea that Wilson stayed sober from 1934 to his death in 1971.

Wilson's doctor, William D. Silkworth, administered the [b:6fc0336324]Towns-Lambert treatment[/b:6fc0336324] as alcohol withdrawal set in. The treatment which was intended to detoxify and induce a cessation of craving included: [b:6fc0336324]large doses of belladonna and henbane [/b:6fc0336324](both dangerous hallucinogenic drugs), [b:6fc0336324]morphine[/b:6fc0336324] (used to detoxify opium addicts and cautiously with alcoholics because of its tendency to induce delirium), [b:6fc0336324]barbiturates, blue-mass[/b:6fc0336324] (which may have contained poisonous levels of mercury), and a potent laxative regimen.

Wilson was feeling a desperate urgency. It was then that he called out, [b:6fc0336324]"If there be a God, let him show himself!"[/b:6fc0336324]

God obeyed, and this is when Wilson had his own mystical experience which he describes in Pass It On:
[b:6fc0336324]"Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. Every joy I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy - I was conscious of nothing else for some time.[/b:6fc0336324]


Wilson took LSD from 1956 to 1959 and raved about it.
[b:6fc0336324]He and others commented on how very similar his LSD experiences were to his spiritual experience in Towns Hospital in 1934.[/b:6fc0336324] Wilson felt he was onto something big.
[b:6fc0336324]Most people who are acquainted with hallucinogenic experiences commonly report feelings of being on to something, the closeness of God, universal love, mystical ecstasy, a profound sense of wellness and rightness, vivid hallucinations, transformative insight, and a deep understanding of the inner workings of things.[/b:6fc0336324]

Every once in a while a guru wanders down out of the crags of the Himalayas with an illuminating message for the common man. The message Wilson got on his mountain top was the blazing thought, "You are a free man."

Wilson was visited by a hallucination in 1934, not God. He was profoundly ill and he was on very powerful drugs. [b:6fc0336324]His "conscious contact with God" did not come as a result of any twelve steps.[/b:6fc0336324] It's good that he was able to stop drinking afterward, but his experience was so subjective and bizarre that it has little use for the rest of the world - unless we take his "blazing thought" to heart.